NORTH CANTON: Stark State College will be holding a training program for natural gas workers from Oct. 8-26.

There will be a public meeting on the so-called floor hand training from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Sept. 6 at the college’s Corporate Services and Continuing Education Center, 265 E. Maple St., North Canton. Meet in room N102.

Interested persons are directed to go to www.shalenet.org and register with Talent Match to begin the process.

Individuals may qualify for free tuition.

The training is limted to 15 to 18 students.

For more information, contact Barbara Milliken at 330-494-6170, Ext. 4289, or Martha Doerr, 330-494-6170, Ext. 4438. You can also call 330-966-5455.

NORTH CANTON: Stark State College will be holding a training program for natural gas workers from Oct. 8-26.

Yoko Ono said it was not hard to recruit more than 180 artists to help convince Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York not to allow natural gas drilling in the macrellus shale through the hydraulic fracturing process known as fracking.

She reached out to some friends and soon, dozens of artists, many of them with homes in New York, agreed to publicly join the campaign.

Granville, Ohio. As growth continues in the exploration, drilling and production of Ohio’s natural gas and crude oil industry, so does the need to provide scholarship opportunities to students who are seeking energy careers. The Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program (OOGEEP) and the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Foundation (Foundation) has awarded thirty-five scholarships to well qualified and highly motivated students.

The members of the OOGEEP and Foundation’s Scholarship Committee consists of industry leaders, and judge the students on career goals, an essay, letters of recommendation, academic achievement, awards or special recognitions, community service and other outside activities. The applicants must also be an Ohio resident or planning to attend an Ohio college, university or vocational school.

For the first time in the scholarship program’s history, the Committee also awarded scholarships at the technical level and awarded welding scholarships to: Joshua Honaker, Lewisburg, and Cory Sestak, Perrysburg, to attend the Hobart Institute of Welding Technology.

“Advances in technology and energy demand drive our need to encourage more students to pursue careers in Ohio’s natural gas and crude oil industry,” states Scholarship Committee Chairman Frank Gonzalez.

OOGEEP Executive Director, Rhonda Reda, adds “OOGEEP’s economic impact study, released last fall, estimates that over 200,000 jobs will be needed in this local industry by 2015. Now is the time to train and prepare our workforce to help develop, produce and supply Ohio’s future energy resources. Supporting and rewarding these outstanding students is a great start.”

The 2012 Scholarships were primarily funded through special industry training proceeds, memorial contributions and general donations from Ohio’s natural gas and crude oil industry.

A state proposal to make far-reaching amendments to oil and gas regulations governing Marcellus Shale gas development indicates stronger rules are needed to protect Pennsylvania's surface and groundwater resources.

Michael Levi at the Council on Foreign Relations has some thoughts on what the U.S. should do with a surplus of natural gas.

Levi writes: "The ongoing debate over whether to allow liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports has featured a recurrent theme: people insist that the gas would be better used within the United States. 'We will go down,' T. Boone Pickens has written, 'as the dumbest generation ever if we export our clean, cheap, abundant supplies of natural gas in favor of dirtier, more expensive OPEC oil.' In a letter to the editor today responding to my op-ed on the subject a couple of weeks ago, Bob Bailey writes, 'We finally have an alternative to foreign oil in the form of natural gas, and Mr. Levi wants to ship it overseas. I’m confused. Why don’t we keep this resource here? Use it here?'”

EID sent a letter to New York filmmaker Josh Fox with a humble request: include facts and context in the forthcomingGasland 2. We believe that Mr. Fox, as a self-described “journalist,” should welcome these recommendations, considering that journalism is a relentless pursuit of the truth and should not be a conduit for advancing an ideological agenda.

The US shale revolution, which flooded the domestic market with both natural gas and opposition to the hydraulic fracturing drilling technique, now needs to stage its own public relations uprising, speakers said this week at an industry event in Denver.

The Marcellus Drilling News last week reported that a federal rule change by the U.S. Department of Transporationcould slow down the shale drilling industry.

In June, the federal agency approved a new “rule clarification” that disallows truckers from subtracting down time as they wait for trucks to be loaded or unloaded when it comes to hauling water and sand for hydraulically fracturing or fracking oil and gas wells.

Last Wednesday, a Pennsylvania judge rules that the Act 13 zoning provisions were unconstitutional, in the middle of a legal appeal.

Judge Pelligrini ruled that the original July 28 order stating that the zoning parts of Act 13 are unconstitutional will stand until the case is heard by the state Supreme Court. That provides clarity for townships during the appeal.

From Saturday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a story by Laura Olson of the paper's Harrisburg Bureau:

HARRISBURG -- Several days after the biannual reporting deadline, it's unclear how much shale gas was produced in Pennsylvania during the first six months of 2012 because the state's largest producer did not properly submit its data.

The amount of Marcellus shale gas produced in Allegheny County more than doubled in the first half of 2012, with nine online wells concentrated in Frazer and Fawn producing more than 3.6 billion cubic feet of gas, according to new data released by the state Department of Environmental Protection.

A former researcher at the Colorado School of Mines who left after coming under fire from drilling interests after he made critical comments about hydraulic fracturing or fracking has lost his job at the University of Wyoming.

Geoffrey Thyne lost his Wyoming job after an energy-drilling association expressed unhappiness with recent critical comments made by Thyne.

A spark from a natural gas drilling operation in north-central West Virginia ignited methane gas several hundred feet underground early Friday, sending up a fireball and triggering a blaze that officials said burned for about an hour on the floor of the rig.

Australia is at the early stages of successfully fracking shale for natural gas, Dow Jones Newswires says via the website Rigzone.

"SYDNEY - Santos Ltd. Friday said Australia is poised to join the ranks of global shale gas producers, targeting first sales of the unconventional fuel in October following encouraging drilling results in the Australian Outback."

Peter Schwartz at Wired magazine takes a look at how an abundance of hydrocarbons from shale and other sources is changing the global energy picture.

He writes in part: "... as fossil fuels become more abundant—and we consume less of them—the incentives to develop clean, renewable energy drop dramatically. As a result, we may no longer be looking at an age of increasing solar, wind, and nuclear power. Instead we are likely moving into a new hydrocarbon era."

State authorities are stepping up their campaign against home builder D.R. Horton in a bid to pressure the Texas company to return underground fracking rights to hundreds of homeowners in North Carolina.

Attorney Thom Cmar of the Natural Resources Defense Council is not satisfied with what Ohio plans to do to tighten up its rules on injection wells that handle the briny waste from hydraulic fracturing or fracking of natural gas-oil wells.

On Wednesday,the NRDC submitted a letter with suggestions to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Energy companies failed to list more than two out of every five fracked wells in eight U.S. states from April 11, 2011, when FracFocus began operating, through the end of last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Environmental advocates say the state’s refusal to conduct regular, comprehensive tests for toxic chemicals in the millions of gallons of ’fracking’ wastes sent down Ohio disposal wells puts the public in jeopardy.

’Folks have a right to know what’s being injected into the ground, both during the fracking process and during disposal,’ said Cheryl Johncox, the director of the Buckeye Forest Council.

State and federal officials say that the 171 privately operated disposal wells are safe, but environmental advocates call fracking waste a threat to public health.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources does conduct spot checks, officials there say, to look for many of the toxic chemicals environmental advocates say they are concerned about. Two spot checks were done in late June, a few days after protesters demonstrated at an Athens County disposal well. No problems were found, said Carlo LoParo, an agency spokesman.

The two June tests were the first random checks the state has performed.

’It’s the safest way overall to get rid of these wastes,’ Simmers said.

Pennsylvania and West Virginia do test disposal wells regularly, but they do not look for fracking chemicals. Instead, the tests measure salt content, iron and other common ingredients of oil- and gas-well wastes.

’It’s really to protect the (disposal well) operator,’ said James Peterson, a West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection program manager. ’You want to make sure you are not getting something that will clog the well or ruin the filters.’

The fracking process injects millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals underground to shatter the shale and to free trapped oil and gas. Disposal wells are the state’s preferred method to deal with the fluid that bubbles back up from recently fracked wells. Shale wells also can keep producing ’brine’ — salt water tainted with toxic metals and radioactive elements — for years.

Last year, Ohio disposal wells injected about 12.2 million barrels of fracking wastes and brine into disposal wells. Fifty-three percent came from shale wells in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. More brine is expected as oil and gas companies frack the Utica shale in eastern Ohio.

Ohio requires disposal-well operators to send analyses of brine from new wells before they are injected, Simmers said. As in other states, the tests measure how much salt, dissolved solids and metals are present in the water.

None of the tests looks for commonly used fracking compounds, including ethylene glycol, which can damage the kidneys, nervous system, lungs and heart.

Though oil and gas companies disclose most of the fracking compounds they use, several are kept confidential. They are listed as trade secrets in state and federal reports.

Teresa Mills, Ohio organizer for the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, said state and federal rules governing disposal wells must be updated so that tests cover all chemicals and compounds.

’Those are tests that were done on your grandfather’s oil and gas well,’ Mills said. ’This is a totally different waste now.’

The state ran more-comprehensive tests that covered a longer list of chemicals and metals on June 28 and June 29 at two injection wells in Athens and Portage counties. LoParo said state officials decided to test the Athens well after environmental advocates protested about it on June 26. He said the Portage County well was a random test.

Tests found barium, strontium, benzene and toluene in brine planned for injection at both wells. Simmers said the compounds are common in oil and gas well wastes and disposal wells are meant to safely contain them.

Aside from spot checks, Simmers said more tests aren’t necessary. He said quarterly inspections and annual integrity tests are more important to determine if wells are leak-free.

Such assurances are unlikely to calm protesters concerned about disposal wells. Two protesters tried to block entrances to Ohio disposal sites this summer.

Chrystia Freeland, editor of Thomson Reuters Digital, says it is likely the world faces an oil glut, not peak oil.

She writes in part: "Forget America’s fiscal cliff, Europe’s currency troubles or the emerging-markets slowdown. The most important story in the global economy today may well be some good news that isn’t yet making as many headlines – the coming surge in oil production around the world.

On June 6, Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission Administrative Law Review Patrick Augustine vacated a citation the federal Occupational and Health Administartion had issued to drilling company Petro-Hunt LLC for failure to have employees wear flame-resistant clothing.

The case involved a fire at the company's well in North Dakota in October 2010.

On Aug. 2, Adam Sieminski, the administrator of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, testified that the Marcellus shale reserves may be larger than has been reported.

He told Congress: "I think it's possible we'll find, as production data begins to come in -- Pennsylvania is a state that has significant lags in reporting of production data -- we will begin to see those numbers inching up."

A new report from IHS Global Insight suggests that the Eagle Ford shale in Texas may surpass the oil output from the Bakken shale in North Dakota.

"Strong drilling results, coupled with the large prospective area, and magnitude of the resource potential, combine to make the Eagle Ford Shale play in South Texas a contender for the best tight oil play in the U.S., according to a new report from IHS (NYSE: IHS), the leading global source of information and analytics.

Two locals of the Laborers' International Union of North America are rallying today in Carroll County against Chesapeake Energy Corp.'s use of out-of-statepipeline-construction companies.

The union locals from Canton (No. 1015) and Steubenville (No. 809) are scheduled to rally at a Chesapeake Energy well site near Carrollton from 8 a.m. to noon. About 50 union workers are slated to be on hand.

A natural gas liquids boom stemming from development of U.S. shale plays will result in the bulk of petrochemical products from natural gas liquids being exported with most going to Latin American, Energy Security Analysis Inc. says in recent report.

Oklahoma-based Devon Energy Corp. says it is disppointed by initial drilling results from two wells in Medina and Ashland counties.

In an Aug. 1 earnings call, company spokesman David A. Hager told analysts that the results from the two wells "were not encouraging."

One well is in Medina County’s Harrisville Township. The other is in Ashland County’s Clear Creek Township.

It appears that the geology failed to produce the expected results, he said.

The Oklahoma-based company is continuing to drill a third well in Knox County’s Morgan Township and is optimistic that the results will be different, said spokesman Chip Minty in a telephone call.

It is too early to say what Devon Energy might do in the Medina-Ashland-Knox area, he said.

"It’s very early on and we’re moving slowly and methodically," he said. "There’s not a lot of information and we’re learning a lot as we go."

But the two wells "did not produce the results we were hoping for," Minty said.

The three wells are farther to the west than most wells being drilled in Ohio’s Utica shale and are on the northwest edge of its lease holdings, the company said.

Devon Energy had staked out leases farther west than other drilling companies and was focusing on oil, not natural gas or natural gas liquids.

Most of the Utica drilling has been in Carroll, Harrison, Columbiana, Jefferson, Mahoning, Stark, Portage and Belmont counties. That area has been especially attractive because the prices paid for natural gas have dropped and drillers can get gas liquids like ethane, butane and propane that are lucrative.

Hager, Devon Energy’s executive vice president of exploration and production, said his company intends to continue drilling in Ohio’s Utica shale but is now looking farther to the east.

"We will continue drilling in a liquids-rich window to the east" where other companies are drilling, he said.

The energy company said it expects to drill five new wells to the east in 2012, he said.

To date, Devon Energy has gotten seven permits from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. That includes one for Wayne County’s East Union Township.

Such disappointing results should not be surprising, said Tom Stewart, executive vice preseident of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association. "This is a difficult play and not everyone is going to succeed," he said.

Drillers, he added, are trying to determine "where it works and where it doesn’t. What’s going on right now in Ohio is a great big experiment and we need to let the experiment happen.…We’re still in a shakedown mode. Companies are still trying to identify core areas. When those areas are finally determined, some companies will be successful and some won’t."

Oklahoma-based Devon Energy Corp. says it is disppointed by initial drilling results from two wells in Medina and Ashland counties.

From the shale drilling blog distributed by Bricker & Eckler law firmin Columbus:

After raising nearly $10 million from investors, a Cuyahoga County group of oil and gas companies collectively known as Preferred Financial Holdings Co. has filed for bankruptcy and agreed to pay $4.5 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Crain's Cleveland Business reports.

Stony Brook University researchers asserted massive hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus shale poses "substantial potential risk" to waterways, but a drilling industry spokesman asserted the claims are based on faulty data.

"Even in a best case scenario, an individual well would potentially release at least 200 cubic meters of contaminated fluids," researchers Daniel Rozell and Sheldon Reaven said.

Regulators should consider additional mandatory steps to reduce the potential of drinking water contamination from salts and naturally occurring radioactive materials, such as uranium, radium and radon from the rapidly expanding fracking industry, the researchers said.

Many treatment facilities "are not designed to handle hydraulic fracturing wastewater," the researchers said.

Rozell and Reaven estimated that 40,000 wells would be drilled if only 10% of the Marcellus shale region is developed.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. still intends to aggressively develop wells in the Utica shale in eastern Ohio.

Ohio is still very attractive because it is producing oil and natural gas liquids, not just natural gas, it said.

Chesapeake provided more specific information on its Ohio operations as part of its second quarter earnings release on Monday and Tuesday.

The cash-strapped company said it has completed $4.7 billion in asset sale in the first half of 2012 and expects to announce deals for another $7 billion in assets in the third quarter to reduce its debts.

Chesapeake reported a second quarter net profit of $929 million or $1.29 a share, up from $467 million or 68 cents a share in the same period of a year ago. All but $3 million came from the sale of its pipeline assets and non-cash gains. Revenue rose 2 percent to $3.4 billion and earnings were 6 cents a share.

It also raised its 2012 production estimates, due to discoveries in Ohio and Texas.

The company said it is on track to close a land deal in West Texas with EnerVest Ltd. The sale price was not disclosed. Two other Texas sales are pending.

Chesapeake has been battered by low natural gas prices and the No. 2 natural gas producer has been shifting away from natural gas to oil and natural gas liquids.

Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon, in a company-issued statement, said, "We are taking aggressive and focused actions to increase cash flow and net asset value per share, while also reducing long-term debt as we continue on ongoing transformation to a more-balanced asset base between higher-margin liquids and lower-margin natural gas."

The energy giant said its production of liquids rose 65 percent and liquids now account for 21 percent of total production with more than 130,000 barrels per day.

It said liquids are projected to be 25 percent of total production in 2013 and 55 percent of revenue in 2013.

The company is projecting that liquid production will increase 32 percent in 2013 while natural gas production will drop 7 percent.

Oklahoma-based Chesapeake said it has drilled 87 wells in eastern Ohio but not all are operational.

Its 28 completed wells are averaging about 1,000 42-gallon barrels of oil equivalents per day, the company said.

Each well is daily averaging about 205 barrels of oil, 150 barrels of natural gas liquids like ethane, butane and propane and 3.8 million cubic feet of natural gas, the company said.

A volume of 6,000 cubic feet of natural gas is equal to one barrel.

The company released specific data on three wells: two in Carroll County and one in Jefferson County.

The Bailey well in Lee Township in Carroll County is producing 205 barrels of oil per day, along with 270 barrels of natural gas liquids and 5.7 million cubic feet of natural gas, the company said. That is equal to 1,420 barrels of oil equivalents.

It said the Snoddy well in Lee Township in Carroll County in daily producing 320 barrels of oil, 250 barrels of gas liquids and 4.2 million cubic feet of natural gas. That is equal to 1,260 barrels of oil equivalents per day.

The Brown well in Jefferson County’s Brush Creek Township is producing 8.7 million cubic feet of natural gas per day, an amount equal to 1.445 barrels of oil equivalents. No liquids are produced at that well.

The company called those three wells and their initial production numbers to be "notable." But the totals are about one third of Chesapeake’s much-publicized Buell well in Harrison County. It is the state’s most productive horizontal well.

The average non-horizontal well in Ohio produces less than 1 barrel of oil per day and about 50,000 cubic feet of natural gas per day or 100 to 150 barrels of oil equivalents.

To date, production numbers from only a dozen Ohio wells have been released.

Another 28 completed Chesapeake wells in Ohio are awaiting installation of pipelines.

Chesapeake has 11 drilling rigs operating in Ohio and expects to have 16 rigs in Ohio before Dec. 31, it said.

The company has 1.3 million acres leased in eastern Ohio and is focusing on Carroll, Harrison, Columbiana and surrounding counties.

Chesapeake said earlier it was trying to sell off about 337,481 acres in Ohio outside of its main core area, as part of the debt-reduction strategy.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. still intends to aggressively develop wells in the Utica shale in eastern Ohio.

On July 31, two Mahoning County residents filed a petition for a writ of mandamus in the Ohio Supreme Court to compel the Beaver Township trustees to accept their petitions to place home rule for the township on the Nov. 6 ballot.

The Clean Air Coun­cil has appealed a per­mit issued by the Penn­syl­va­nia Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion to Angelina Gath­er­ing Com­pany for a com­pres­sor sta­tion expan­sion in Her­rick Town­ship, Brad­ford County.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A natural gas drilling company is taking a new tack in the industry’s fight against local drilling bans: It’s threatening to sue if New York regulators don’t step in and extinguish the prohibitions.

John Holko, president of Lenape Resources, sent a letter to state Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joe Martens saying a moratorium prohibiting natural gas development in the Livingston County town of Avon forced his company to shut down its wells there.

The state enacted a drilling moratorium in 2008 when DEC began an environmental review of horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking." Lenape’s wells in Avon, however, are vertical wells that were not subject to that moratorium. The town law doesn’t distinguish between types of wells, but Town Supervisor David LeFeber said it was worded to protect Lenape’s existing wells.

Regardless, Holko said Avon’s moratorium and others like it violate a 1981 law that says state rules supersede local ordinances in the regulation of gas development.

"Lenape is trying to make it clear to DEC that the agency has a legal duty to carry out state law," Michael Joy, Lenape’s lawyer, said on Monday. "That duty includes informing local municipal governments that they don’t have the authority to regulate the oil and gas industry."

In the past, DEC has sent letters to towns that enacted laws regulating oil and gas development, telling them they didn’t have the authority to do so. In its letter to Martens, Lenape attached one such correspondence, sent to the city of Olean in 1984.

David Slottje, an Ithaca lawyer who helps towns draft moratoriums or bans on gas drilling, said in a letter to Martens on Tuesday that since two courts have upheld local bans, DEC doesn’t have to tell the towns to repeal them.

More than 30 municipalities in upstate New York have passed bans on gas drilling and more than 80 have enacted moratoriums in anticipation of DEC completing its environmental review and lifting the 4-year-old state moratorium. The actions are in response to fears that fracking, which frees gas by injecting a well with chemically treated water at high pressure to crack rock deep underground, could contaminate water supplies or cause other harm. Drillers and DEC say state regulations and standard industry safeguards protect against harm from drilling and fracking.

Martens has said that local ordinances will be taken into consideration when the agency approves permits for shale gas wells.

Denver-based Anschutz Resources took the town of Dryden to court over its ban and a Middlefield landowner sued over that town’s ban. Both laws were upheld by judges who said bans are not regulation, so the state law against local regulation of gas development didn’t apply. Albany lawyer Tom West has said the decisions will be appealed.

Local control over gas drilling has also been an issue in other states in the Marcellus Shale region, which includes southern New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. The gas industry says local laws create a patchwork of regulation that thwarts development.

A Pennsylvania court last week ruled that the state can’t restrict localities from using zoning laws to regulate oil and gas drilling within their borders. Ohio townships were stripped of regulatory authority over gas drilling under a law passed in 2004. Ordinances enacted by a handful of West Virginia communities to ban gas drilling were overturned last year by a judge who said the state has sole authority to regulate the industry. Morgantown, W. Va., enacted new zoning ordinances recently that restrict drilling to designated industrial zones; an industry group has said it may challenge that in court.

Deborah Goldberg, an attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice who represents Dryden, said Lenape is wrong in saying DEC has an obligation to take enforcement action against towns that ban drilling.

"To the contrary, the statute plainly gives the agency discretion over enforcement," Goldberg said via email. "Under the circumstances, it would be a waste of scarce resources if DEC were to take action before the appellate courts resolve the pre-emption claims."

DEC apparently agrees.

"The scope of the pre-emption must be left to the courts," DEC spokeswoman Emily DeSantis said by email.

Lenape said if DEC doesn’t take action against the town of Avon, the company will do so and will name DEC as a party in the lawsuit.

Lenape’s broader goal is to send a message to other municipalities that they don’t have the authority to enact gas development bans or moratoriums, Joy said.